Like hearing voices in your head!
Okay, let’s get one thing out of the way right now: I’m not an audiophile. I do not now own, nor have I ever owned, a vacuum tube. I’m perfectly happy listening to digital music, and couldn’t tell you how “warm” a sound is if I had a sound thermometer. I’m just a standard, run of the mill geek who, when deciding to buy some headphones, decided to buy the best ones anywhere close to my price range.
I’m pretty sure it’s standard nerd practice: let’s say you need a new sink. You could go down to the store and look at the actual sinks they have there, or you could spend six or eight happy hours wandering through the dark corners of the internet where sink aficionados hold flame wars between supporters of porcelain and the acolytes of stainless steel. In the end you know far more about sinks than you ever cared to, and you’re convinced that the reasonably priced local sinks aren’t good enough to give to homeless rats to use as shelter, much less put in your house. No, according to SinkLovers.com, the sink you need is this specially crafted, ergonomically perfect model from a small, family owned shop in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country.
If you’re married or otherwise attached to someone who hasn’t been doing sink research they will stop you from wasting all those hours of driving to Pennsylvania and all that money on a new sink, and you will end up buying one that is just above what you initially set as your reasonable price range. If you’re totally single you will end up with an amazing, hand-crafted sink and a story that you tell so often that nobody wants to talk to you anymore.
Anyway, my headphone purchase was like that, except audiophiles are much more intense than you can possibly imagine. On the whole they are thoughtful, even on internet forums, but they have some strongly held opinions. Having taken an office job, I was quickly annoyed by the banality of all the conversations going on around me and decided it was time to take action and get some headphones that were of better quality than my came-with-the-iPod earbuds I had been using. (Note: never, under any circumstances, post something like “what’s wrong with those earbuds? I like ‘em!” where an audiophile might read it. One of you will end up dead.)
Suddenly I was in a world where it was acceptable to call headphones “cans”, and freely discuss things like sound distortion and the merits of closed vs. open headphones. After three days I had settled on a pair that was only $1300, well, $1400 after I got the external preamp that would remove all the “gunge” from the DAC being inside my computer next to all those other “noisy” components…
And then my wife reminded me that both of our computers combined didn’t cost $1400. So I asked one my friends, and he recommended these:
The Sennheiser HD 280 Pro Headphones.
At $79 on sale, they are still the most expensive piece of audio equipment I’ve ever purchased, but they’re worth every penny. I could go into ludicrous detail about the roomy ear cups, the sleek fold-down design, the audio profile they present, but let me go one better.
The first day I used them I took them to work, put them on, and almost immediately sent the following text to my friend who recommend them:
“It’s like Norah Jones is singing inside my head.”
And it is. The sound is beautiful. No electronic noise cancelling (because that would distort the music), just solid German engineering, but it’s enough to drown out the office noise. I tried another favorite song: The Flaming Lips’ “The Observer” off of The Soft Bulletin. If you don’t know the song, it’s got a deep bass heartbeat running through the track, low enough that iPod earbuds don’t even try. On the HD 280 Pros each beat was rich and thick and hypnotic, just as it’s supposed to be. I started listening to all my favorite music again, using these headphones. And in a lot of songs it was like someone had put a whole new song underneath the one I’d been listening to for years. So, while I still ardently claim that I’m not an audiophile, I can see where they’re coming from. But I can’t hear them. Not with Miles Davis doing a private concert inside my skull.
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It so happens that I’ve been looking around for decent headphones and was spooked by the prices – I am like you, I can’t tell the difference between fancy things, but I know that I’d like something better than I’ve got. I will look into these bad boys!
Everything Sennheiser makes is great. I’ve also got the HD-202 headphones which were much cheaper (around $20) and were the gateway drug that led me to buying the HD -280 Pros.
Is it wrong that the takeaway of this post, for me, is that now I kind of feel the urge to delve into the fascinating world of internet sink culture?
There are some seriously unplumbed depths there, and you never know what you’re going to run into just around the bend.
I have the more lightweight and delicate Sennheiser PX100 and PX200; both are wonderful headphones with great sound. I do like the more “robust” design of the headphones you’re recommending, and the sales price looks good, too. They cost about as much as what I paid for mine, which were not on sale!
Dude. Totally refreshing to know I’m not the only one who researches sinks in the middle of the night. Good thing for people like us wives have some common sense.
Wow, coincidence. I just bought these on Friday so I could drown out the yammering of my co-workers. I like them a lot. Great sound, great head fit, excellent external sound blockage and I got them on sale for $119 CDN. I think that’s pretty cheap when weighed against the lives that I surely would have taken had I not bought the headphones…
I wore mine for three hours straight yesterday. I had to put them on when someone asked started asking their neighbor random Disney trivia questions like “which of the Disney “Princesses” isn’t actually a princess by either birth or marriage?” After I spent ten minutes finding out that the answer was “Mulan” I decided it was time for some music.